


Replay

by blithers



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/F, Groundhog Day, Stealth Happy Ending, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 12:24:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5090648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blithers/pseuds/blithers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ellie keeps reliving the day Riley gets bitten, over and over.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Replay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> Sumi, I hope you enjoy this extra treat (well, a trick, really). Happy Halloween!
> 
> Thank you to C. for beta reading.

**Day 1**

Ellie is kissing Riley, she is doing something she’d only thought about in restless, sleepy, half-dark moments. She is _kissing Riley_. She’s never kissed anybody before. It feels odd and dry and chapped, Riley’s lips pressed against her own, and everything, Ellie knows suddenly, deep in her bones, is going to be all right.

Riley looks at her, after. There’s the hint of a smile, lop-sided and shy, a flicker of something vast and awed in her eyes.

An hour after that, Riley is showing her the bite mark on the palm of her hand, the motion slow with disbelief and shock, and Ellie’s arm is throbbing sharply with pain, and Ellie wants to scream or cry or throw up or do all three of those things at once, because _not them_ , not them not them. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They are better than this; the two of them are protected, they are invincible, untouchable. They are two normal teenage girls spending a day at the mall, they are bright lights in a shattered world. They are _better than this_.

Ellie falls asleep crying against Riley’s shoulder, her arm wrapped around Riley’s waist, trying not to get snot on the shoulder of Riley’s jacket.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

 

**Day 2**

Ellie wakes up with teeth on her neck.

She panics, reaching for the knife underneath her pillow, before she registers the flash of Riley’s face and a snort of laughter on the skin underneath her ear. 

Ellie sits up in bed, frantic.

“How did we get back?” Ellie asks. “We were… you were…” Ellie’s hands scrambles at her forearm. The skin there is pale and and healthy and whole.

Riley holds a hand up, laughing. “Oh my god, you should see your face!”

Ellie ignores her, and grabs Riley’s hand, yanking her off balance, to examine her palm intently. “You’re alive,” Ellie breaths. “You’re not bitten.”

Riley looks at her like she’s somehow the crazy one. “Uh, no. What’s gotten into you?”

Ellie rushes at Riley then, hugging her hard. Riley hesitates, then sneaks an arm around Ellie’s waist, and buries her face in the crook of Ellie’s neck. It must have been a dream. It had seemed so real, though, so painfully real.

“I guess you missed me,” Riley says softly, into her hair.

Ellie steps back and clear her throat. “Maybe."

“Well, come on, then,” Riley says, and shifts her weight, the gesture oddly uncertain. “I have something I want to show you.”

 

 

**Day 5**

“Get down,” Ellie whispers, yanking at the sleeve of Riley’s shirt, a moment before they can hear the rumble of the patrol vehicle. The spotlight slips just over the top of their heads, and they both hold their breath, pressed together in the darkness.

They count down before moving on again, _3 - 2 - 1 - clear_.

“How did you know that car was coming?” Riley asks, as Ellie grabs her hand to pull her along. “What, are you a fortune teller now? Ooooooh,” Riley waves her arms out in front of her, pantomiming something like a ghost, “the mysterious Ellie is here to tell our future. All hail the girl who knows the future!”

Ellie shoves Riley’s shoulder, giggling. “Shut up. It was totally obvious that truck was coming.” Ellie doesn’t say that she is starting to memorize the timing of the routes, the patrol trucks, the soldiers.

They jump down massive slabs of broken concrete, rebar sticking out of the ends. Riley waits for Ellie at the bottom, and they walk side by side into the promenade of the mall, skirting shattered glass from ransacked window displays. The stores are empty, stripped to bare shelves and white, humanoid mannequins that glow in the light of Ellie’s flashlight. A couple of the stores still have knick knacks remaining, spin racks of tourist junk, signs hung promoting end of the year sales.

Riley pulls on a Frankenstein mask from the Halloween store and sidles up next to Ellie, elbowing her conspiratorially. “Hey, how do monsters tell the future?”

Ellie shakes her head.

“They read their _horrorscopes_. Get it?”

Ellie laughs, doubling over, her vision impaired through the vinyl mask she’s wearing. “Good one.”

“You’re so easy,” Riley says, pulling her mask off with a grin.

“Oh yeah?” Ellie grabs the Skeleseer from the display and shakes it threateningly. “Will I… laugh at the next joke that Riley tells me?”

She flips the skull up and waits for the answer to float to the top. _I am dead certain it is true._

“Told you,” Riley says smugly. “Hey, give me that for a second.” Riley shakes the skull next to her ear. “Did Ellie know that patrol truck was coming earlier?”

They both crowd around, waiting for the answer. _This has happened before and will happen again._

Ellie frowns, slapping the side of the Skeleseer, unease crawling up her spine. “Is this thing broken? I don’t even think that’s a real answer.”

“Are you broken?” Riley asks portentously, and shakes again.

_No._

“Well, there you go. Not broken.” Riley sets the skull back down. “C’mon, let’s go do something else.”

 

 

**Day 9**

Ellie wakes up with teeth on her neck. She stands in front of Riley, pocket knife in hand, staring down at her forearm, the words _bitten bitten bitten_ pulsing like adrenaline in her body.

What the _fuck._

 

 

**Day 17**

Riley holds up the palm of hand, panic and shock in her eyes. Blood slides like red lace down her wrist, and Ellie wonders why the two of them aren’t dead a thousand times over.

 

 

**Day 18**

Ellie feels like she’s going crazy.

She wakes up with teeth on her neck, Riley’s breath hot in her ear, the same thing every day, and reaches for the knife under her pillow before she remembers where she is. Ellie has been living the same day for weeks now. She knows what this day is going to be. Everything happens exactly the same way unless she changes it.

“I’ve lived this day before,” Ellie tries saying this time, hefting a brick in her hand, about to throw it at the battered display trucks in the middle of the mall. “Like…. like this day keeps happening or something. I wake up and it’s this day, all the time. It’s like a dream or something.”

Riley looks at her, head tilted to the side, then laughs, like she sees the joke Ellie wasn’t telling. “Pull the other one,” Riley says, and throws the first brick.

“We get bitten,” Ellie says, and tosses her own brick at the car windows below them. “And then it’s like, we die. I mean, we don’t die, I guess. We get bitten, you know?”

“Stop being so morbid.” Riley nails the windshield of a truck and whoops. “We’re not going to get bitten, Ellie. We’ve been here a thousand times before. This mall is so safe it’s boring.”

Ellie frowns, memories clashing inside of her, thick and overwhelming. They’ve taken different paths, sometimes. The memories overlay on top of each other, routes through a maze drawn on tracing paper. Every map ends the same way, though: Riley gets bitten. Usually Ellie ends up bitten, too. Once or twice she didn’t.

But Riley - Riley always ends up bitten.

Riley stops, catching the strange expression on Ellie’s face, and her bravado seemed to fall away from her all at once. “You really want to go back that bad?“

“It’s not…”

“I just didn’t think you liked that stupid school that much,” Riley says, her voice both casual and painfully transparent. Ellie knows Riley blames herself for the things they both said when Riley left. Ellie knows this entire day is Riley’s way of saying she’s sorry, of apologizing for something she doesn’t ever feel like she can apologize for.

Ellie leans forward and kisses Riley.

Ellie can feel Riley’s breath on her lips. They’ve never kissed with tongues before - in all of Ellie’s memories, it’s always been this: a careful pressing of their mouths together. Ellie forgets for a moment that this Riley has never kissed her before, that this is a first kiss for only one of them. Ellie tries to run her tongue, awkwardly, along Riley’s bottom lip.

Riley pulls back from Ellie, breathing hard, that curious, awed light in her eyes again.

“Sorry,” Ellie says.

“It’s okay,” Riley says softly, then clears her throat. “C’mon. I’ve got something I want to show you.”

Two hours later, Riley is gasping next to her, blood on the floor, infection streaking down the side of her body like a red, pulsing supernova .

Ellie doesn’t remember anything after that until she wakes up again.

 

 

**Day 29**

The time she had watched Riley die is a nightmare, the memory massive and overwhelming. Riley’s injuries had been too severe for her to do anything except bleed out, air bubbling in her lungs. Ellie remembers throwing up. She remembers crying until she was so sick she threw up a second time, snot and puke and blood all over the front of her tank top. She had looked at Riley’s gun, the cold, black metal of it, and thought about what she still had that was worth living for.

Ellie had fallen asleep with the handle of the gun clenched in her fist and Riley’s rapidly stiffening fingers in her other hand.

Ellie had woken up with Riley’s mouth and teeth warm on her neck and Riley’s breathless laughter in her ear, _alive_ , alive, so alive.

That was when Ellie had started to think it wasn’t going to end.

 

 

**Day 32**

“Let’s stay here and get drunk,” Ellie says.

Riley looked up from rummaging in Winston’s trunk. “Okay, you did _not_ just say what I think you said.”

Ellie’s head aches with a thick sense of déjà vu, and she can’t stop thinking about kissing Riley, about Riley dying, Riley being bitten, Riley Riley _Riley_. Ellie has never been drunk before, but she’s pretty sure from what people say that this is the sort of problem alcohol was invented to solve.

“Ms. Goody Two-Shoes wants to get _drunk_ ,” Riley continues, disbelief in her voice.

“Why not?” Ellie crowds up into Riley’s space, gets in her face a little bit. “You gonna punk out on me?”

Riley snorts and straightens her shoulders, just like Ellie had known she would. “More like you’re gonna punk out on yourself. But, it’s not like we have alcohol anyway, so I don’t….”

Ellie pulls the bottle out of Winston’s trunk and waves it in front of Riley’s nose. Riley’s eyes widen.

“No way. How did you know that was in there?”

“You’re not the only one with secrets,” Ellie says, trying to sound like she does this sort of thing all the time. In a way, that’s kind of true.

Riley opens the bottle and takes a whiff, wrinkling her nose. “That ain’t water.” Riley holds the bottle out for Ellie with a little smirk. “You first.”

Ellie takes a swig and coughs, her eyes watering. It never gets any better. 

Riley does the same, and they sit down shoulder-to-shoulder on Winston’s camp bed.

They talk and take small, awful sips of the grain alcohol, and Riley eventually pulls out the joke book from her backpack. Ellie laughs her way through the same dumb jokes she’s heard a dozen times before. The alcohol makes her feel dizzy and tired at the same time.

“I feel funny,” Ellie says, and curls herself up next to Riley, snaking an arm around Riley’s waist. Riley freezes. Ellie keeps forgetting that Riley’s never done this before.

Riley hesitates, then slowly puts her arm around Ellie too.

“You feel _drunk_.”

“Drunk,” Ellie repeats, giggling, her face pressed into the warmth of Riley’s body. She feels safe and warm, tucked away with Riley, both of them invisible to the outside world.

“Crunk,” Riley says. “I heard somebody say that once. It means, like, crazy drunk.”

“That’s hilarious.”

“I know, right?”

Ellie can feel Riley’s finger playing absently with the hem of her tank top, the occasional brush of warmth as Riley’s fingers touch her stomach. They’re both quiet now. Ellie can hear the thump of Riley’s heart underneath her ear, the pulse of blood fighting its way to life underneath skin.

“I didn’t mean what I said then,” Riley says after a while, the words quiet. Ellie doesn’t understand what Riley’s talking about for a moment.

“What?”

“When I left, when we - when I…. said those things.” Riley takes a deep breath; her fingers pause on Ellie’s hem. “I didn’t mean them.”

Oh. “I know,” Ellie says. She’s heard Riley say about this before, the words _you’re the only one who can_ echoing across days.

“I really am, I’m so sorry,” Riley continues, the words coming out of her in a sick rush now, an open wound of fear and self-recrimination. “I was so angry, and I’ve regretted it ever since, and I kept thinking, all I have to do is talk to her again, and maybe I can make her understand, maybe I can make it up to her, maybe I can - “

“I love you,” Ellie says.

Riley’s breath shutters in her chest.

“I love you,” Ellie says, sitting up, pulling back a little so she can see Riley’s face. “I do. You’re my best friend. I missed you so much after you left, and I was so _angry_ after you left, and I didn’t want to miss you, because I was so mad at you. But I did. I missed you so much, Riley.”

The words feel _right_. They feel like golden light on Ellie’s tongue.

“I don’t…” Riley starts to whisper, trailing off, staring at her, eyes wide, and then she surges forward, kissing Ellie hard.

In all of Ellie’s memories, she’s always the first one to kiss Riley. There’s a hot, nervous, excited feeling in Ellie’s stomach. All she can think about is Riley’s lips, the feel of Riley’s tongue against her own. Riley’s arm wraps around Ellie’s waist and she pulls the two of them close together and it’s overwhelming, it’s _overwhelming_ being this close to another person.

Riley pulls back and says, “Do you hear that?”

Ellie tries to kiss Riley again, not caring, not listening, but Riley shakes her head. Riley’s eyes flicker toward the canvas door of the tent, and Ellie hears it then, in the distance, echoing in the empty mall.

Infected. No matter what Ellie does, where she thinks of to hide, they always come in the end.

“ _Shit_ ,” Riley says, and jolts up from the bed, wobbly on her feet from the alcohol. Ellie tries to stand up and stumbles. “Why are there infected here?”

Ellie shakes her head. Her tongue feels strange and too big in her mouth, and her lips are still tingling from kissing Riley. “I don’t know.”

Riley looks out of the flap of the tent, scanning the open mall. “We have to run. We can’t stay here, Ellie, we have to - can you run?”

Ellie nods. They run.

They don’t make it out.

 

 

**Day 39**

She’d going to break the pattern. She always goes with Riley, and Riley always gets bitten. Ellie can change that. She knows what to do.

“I can’t go with you,” Ellie says, her back pressed against the frame of her bunk bed for support. “You need to - you have to go back to the Fireflies, where you’re safe, and I have to stay here, and - ”

“You’re just saying that because you don’t want to come with me,” Riley says. There’s hurt and rejection in her voice. Ellie steals herself and makes herself say the words.

“Maybe I don’t, okay, Riley? You were a real bitch the last time I saw you. Maybe if you wanted us to still be friends, you should have thought about that before you left me behind to go follow your dream of becoming a Firefly or whatever.”

Riley’s face pales. But then she sneers a second later, like what Ellie is saying doesn’t mean anything.

“Like I wanted to hang out with you anyway,” Riley says, and leaves with one last, final look back at Ellie.

Ellie can’t sleep after that. She stares at the bed above her, at the pattern of metal coils. Ellie sleepwalks through military drills. She eats dinner that tastes like cardboard in her mouth with a couple kids she knows and zones out listening to the curfew announcements as the sun goes down.

That night, Riley’s old roommate Liz sneaks into Ellie’s room and whispers the news, that FEDRA is telling everybody that a group of Fireflies was attacked by infected that evening. Liz informs Ellie that people are saying there was a _girl_ with the group of Fireflies that got attacked. While Fireflies dying is a sentence being carried out for their crimes, nobody wants to see a child hurt, that’s what everybody says.

“I mean, who would put a kid in danger like that?” Liz asks with wide eyes.

Ellie stays awake that night, watching the hands of her clock approach midnight, and thinks about Riley - Riley alone, dead or dying or infected. Riley by herself, thinking that Ellie hates her. Ellie feels sick, sick to her stomach when she thinks about it.

The minute hand hits midnight.

Ellie wakes up with teeth on her neck.

 

 

**Day 48**

“Let’s play this one,” Ellie says, and points toward an arcade game in the corner they haven’t tried yet. “I want to do this one. And then I have to go, okay? We have to leave.”

 

 

**Day 51**

“So you’re telling me we’re living the same day over and over again?”

Ellie nods, and Riley looks at her strangely, then laughs, shrugging it off.

“Pull the other one,” Riley says, and jumps down off the last slab of broken concrete. “You starting to crack up or something, Ellie?”

Ellie thinks of Riley saying they could go mad together, bitten together, that it would be poetic, grand. She remembers all the days that Riley doesn’t remember living alongside her. The truth hits Ellie hard then, like a bullet, like a blow.

Ellie is alone. There’s nobody else. It isn’t enough that the universe wiped out the world with freaking zombies and made Ellie live in it. It’s doing _this_ to her, keeping her best friend next to her and forever out of reach, building up this knot of emotions in her chest that Ellie can barely understand, this complicated mess of dependence and devotion and huge, immense, crippling love. Ellie doesn’t understand why the universe keeps tearing this feeling, these _memories_ away from Riley.

Ellie jumps down next to Riley and, tentative, reaches out to hold her hand. Riley looks over at Ellie, surprised. Ellie tightens her grip.

 

 

**Day 67**

Infected are coming after them, running, snarling, slobbering, dead-eyed. “Come on, come on,” Riley pants, running. Air burns like acid in Ellie’s lungs. She doesn’t understand why it always ends up like this. No matter what she does, no matter where she tries to go, it’s the sound of infected in the distance, the rattle of bodies that shouldn’t be there, and Riley trying to lead them away from danger. Riley bitten.

Riley trips in front of Ellie, and stumbles trying to jump a barrier. It’s a mistake that lasts a split-second. The two infected catch up with them, swarming, pressing in.

Ellie swings her knife blindly and stabs one of the infected in the hand. There’s no reaction. Riley shoots a woman in the kneecap, her hands shaking badly, the gun unsteady in her hand. The woman drops, still coming at them, dragging her torso and whole leg along the ground.

Something big is building up inside of Ellie, something desperate and dark and awful. She can’t take it, she just can’t _take it_ anymore. She can’t watch Riley get bitten anymore. She can’t watch Riley die, she can’t watch her turn into infected, she can’t live out the days one by one, she can’t _do_ it.

Ellie would do anything for Riley.

She would do _anything_ for her.

Ellie throws herself in front of Riley, closes her eyes, and spreads her arms, using her body as a shield.

“Ellie,” Riley gasps, “what are you - “

Elle feels the bite, feels it happening, and she doesn’t fight it.

“Run,” Ellie gasps, tears coming to her eyes. “Riley, get out of here, you have to save - “

Riley scrambles over the barrier behind them, then backs up a couple steps and raises her gun again. Ellie flinches when the gun fires, arms still outspread. The infected in front of her, the one who’d bit her, falls. The woman dragging herself along the floor claws at Ellie’s ankle. Ellie kicks her hand away and vaults over the barrier and runs to Riley.

Riley feints toward the scaffolding to the window out, but Ellie grabs her arm,. “No,” Ellie says. “This way.” She circles Riley back around from where they came, heading to the exit on the other end of the mall.

They make it out, gasping. Ellie pulls her arm in close to her chest, cradling the wound, blood dripping down her forearm. Riley looks horrified, stricken.

“Ellie,” Riley breathes, and touches Ellie’s bitten arm gently.

Ellie grabs Riley’s hand and looks at her palm.

There’s nothing there.

No bite. Riley’s hand is clean and healthy.

“You didn’t get bitten,” Ellie says, numb with disbelief. “You’re okay.”

“You jumped out in front of me.” Riley winds up and smacks Ellie across her good arm, hard. “Why would you do such a stupid thing, Ellie?”

“I had to,” Ellie says, and kisses Riley for the second time that day, on the lips.

“I’ll stay with you,” Riley whispers, and wraps her arms around Ellie carefully. “No matter what happens, I’ll stay with you.”

 

 

**The Beginning**

Ellie wakes up.

There’s a bone-deep pain in her arm, a throbbing of _wrongness_ in her body, and she looks down at the bite in her arm. It takes her a long, sleepy moment to realize what she’s looking at.

Ellie sits up, and Riley shifts sleepily next to her.

The day changed. _The day changed._

“Riley,” Ellie says, and shakes Riley’s shoulder.

Riley’s eyes slip open. “What?”

“It’s the next day,” Ellie says, staring down at her arm. The bite is angry and swollen, but the telltale lines of red radiating outward haven’t started. There’s no trace of the marks of the infectant seeping into her system yet. “I’m not stuck anymore.”

“Not… what?” Riley struggles up to seated next to Ellie, frowning, then grabs Ellie’s arm. “Is this a hallucination thing or something? Ellie, how do you feel?”

Ellie wants to laugh and cry at the same time. She’s stlll bitten. She woke up and she’s still bitten, she’s still going to turn into one of those… _things_. Time didn’t reset, not this time. Ellie’s stuck. Riley is going to have to shoot her, after she turns, after she can’t remember who she is anymore.

Ellie starts to cry and Riley pulls her close, whispering words Ellie only have understands into her hair.

“I’m never leaving you,” Riley is saying, over and over again. “Never.”

Ellie wipes her eyes and nose on the hem of her tank top and looks down at her arm again. She wonders when the infection will start to set in. She wonders how much she’ll remember, after that.

At least Riley is safe. At least she did that. She kept Riley safe.

“C’mere,” Riley says, and kisses Ellie’s forehead, pulling her down. Ellie lays her head on Riley’s chest and closes her eyes, exhausted and wrung-out and in pain, and wraps her arms around Riley, clinging to the one thing she has in this whole fucked-up world.

Ellie waits for the change to come.

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed this story and would like to share it, please consider reblogging [this post](http://blithers.tumblr.com/post/132781088428/replay-blithers) on tumblr!


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